Patty Murray: endorsed by one more vet

Sen. Patty Murray and I have disagreed about things in the past — much though I doubt the senator’s campaign ever noticed this particular horsefly on its arse.

There was a time I joined with other small operators of the American Cable Association to lobby our members and senators and was rudely dismissed by a slab-armed intern with butch-waxed henna spikes and no time for rural operators. Years later, as a taxpayer and a more-or-less law and order citizen, I was horrified when Sen. Murray voted to hand fat bags of cash to criminal bankers in the notorious scheme known as TARP (“Toward A Rape of the Populace”).

I’m less patient with her “Mom in tennis shoes” image as flexed by a now-consummate Beltway insider. It also disappoints me when a woman with Sen. Murray’s power, influence and legacy chooses to piddle on Dino Rossi’s midget record rather than beating the bronze gong of her own accomplishments. Still, I’ll mark the box for Ms. Murray the instant my ballot shows up in today’s mail. Turns out, I can be a one-issue voter.

I’m voting for Sen. Murray because of my father. Dad’s a diehard Republican who characterizes himself as “a little to the right of Attilla the Hun” and would sooner drink his own bathwater than vote for any Democrat or woman other than Dixie Lee Ray (who was, of course, borderline in both categories). Pop spent 20-odd years fighting the VA for benefits for the bilateral hearing loss he suffered as a fighter pilot way back in the early jet age. Then he wrote to Sen. Murray’s office. Since she unstuck his file, he gets his modest Comp & Pen checks real regular.

Sitting on the Veterans Committee, the Defense Subcommittee, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee and the Homeland Security Subcommittee (among several others), Sen. Murray is, in fact, guilty of becoming a part of the system. If I recall correctly, that’s what we elected her for in the first place: to get things done for us.

Our senator delivers for lots of Washington citizens, but the people I blare on about in my little one-note choir are veterans — whether they live in Seattle, Spokane, Humptulips or, for that matter, on some Missouri watermelon farm. Murray started keeping promises for vets long before our recent wars made it fashionable. She is, in that way, the best of us.

My buddy Charlie, veteran of Beirut and Central America service as a Marine Corps machine gunner, went on to OCS and was 10 meters from a helo that crashed during night ops. Charlie woke up with enough pieces of chopper in him that he’ll never pass another security screen, and PTSD debilitating enough that he rarely leaves the house. Charlie wasn’t up to wrassling benefits out of the VA, but his wife called Sen. Murray’s office. If you can’t guess the rest, you aren’t a veteran who has asked Patty Murray for help. Her office whirled into action like the cartoon Tasmanian devil inked onto Charlie’s bicep.

She’s got juice, that gal, but it’s less important than her heart. Like me, Senator Murray’s got a veteran for a father. David L. Johns watched over all Americans in WWII, and now his daughter proudly watches over his busted brothers and sisters in arms, keeping America’s promises.

She helped my buddy Buck, who may have more rifles in his personal armory than the arms room of the unit we deployed to Iraq with. A life member of the NRA since approximately birth and of the VFW since serving with a small boat unit in Somalia, Buck’s no liberal pansy. He’s voting to return Sen. Murray to the Veterans Committee. Could be because she got his anti-convulsant meds expedited, or possibly it’s because the VFW-PAC endorses the proven Murray, not the untested Rossi. Combat vets have plenty of reasons not to automatically trust the new guy.

Dino Rossi can jaw all he wants about how he cherishes men and women in uniform, but Patty Murray — who interned at the Seattle VA Hospital long before its morgue was transformed into Amazon.com’s mailroom — has walked that walk longer and prouder than he ever can. Sure, Murray advocates for working folks and small businesses and schools and a woman’s right to manage her own hoo-hoo, but as for me and my house, we vote vets first.